When Pope Francis Joked About Cardinal McCarrick Going to Hell

The Irish have a name for the likes of Ted McCarrick, Sleeveen. A sleeveen is a sly, smooth talking trickster, whose silver tongue dupes and deceives people. Sleeveens are often successful in politics, able to charm and inculcate trust among people, especially the powerful.

Ted McCarrick is your typical loquacious Irishman, weaving endearing self-deprecating tales and occasional Irish jokes sprinkled throughout his speeches and sermons. McCarrick enjoys the gift of gab, employing it over the decades, as an effective lobbyist, fundraiser, and as the ultimate cleric with political clout. Even as an octogenarian, the silver-tongued one appears to be an engaging, even likable, aging leprechaun.

If you listen carefully to McCarrick, he simply can’t resist bragging about his close personal relationship and conversations with Pope Francis. According to McCarrick, he and Bergoglio are old friends whose paths crossed over the decades.

In October 2013, McCormick gave a speech at Villanova entitled, “Who is Pope Francis.” During the talk, McCarrick shared a conversation that he had with the newly elected Pope Francis. McCarrick told the audience that he had a very serious cardiac incident while he was at the Vatican during the 2013 Conclave. When he returned from the hospital to the seminary where he was staying, his phone rang and it was the newly elected Pope Francis on the line inquiring about McCarrick’s health.

McCarrick relayed this conversation with the Pope Francis, “I told the Pope that I guess the Lord still has some work for me to do.” The Pope responded to McCarrick, “But on the other hand, maybe the Devil did not have your accommodations ready.”

This same Bergoglio story is retold in a 2014 effusive interview of Cardinal McCarrick. David Gibson interviewed McCarrick for a Washington Post article,entitled, “Globe-trotting Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is almost 84, and working harder than ever.”

McCarrick also told Gibson about another curious exchange with Pope Francis when the pontiff was surprised to see Cardinal McCarrick show up during the Pope’s visit to the Holy Land in May of 2014:

"McCarrick travels regularly to the Middle East, and was in the Holy Land for Francis’ visit in May.

“The bad ones, they never die!” The pope teased McCarrick again when he saw him.”

The bad ones never die! Was this a mere tease or was it an indication of the Pope’s awareness of McCarrick’s sordid conduct with seminarians and boys?

Ask any McCarrick victim, they will tell you that he was a bad one, protected for decades by his brother bishops and cardinals who knew about his immoral and criminal behavior and looked the other way.

Edward Pentin, the Vatican reporter for the National Catholic Register reports that a senior curial official said the homosexual network in the Vatican “has never been worse.” And for the last five years during the entire Francis papacy, Cardinal McCarrick was able to globe trot around the world as a papal emissary for various Catholic charities and causes.